Thursday, January 26, 2006

Prejudice

What is prejudice? Why do we educated urban people assume we are beyond prejudice?In reality all of us are biased about economic class, alma mater, religion, brands and God knows whatelse . Everyone does however have their own prejudice. Some are unaware of their prejudices. Some are afraid to admit it even to themselves.To have prejudice is to pre judge and to generalize. We did a valuable component on the nature of prejudice in my 7th std class. I know it is assimilated somewhere into my thinking but can’t remember the details now. My school didn’t believe in teaching s details of the numerous pacts and other History History things. Though I am quite clueless, I am glad about that.Anyway the point of all that was that one of the abstract chapters we did was prejudice.

Recently, I traveled from Jammu to Delhi by a night bus. It was the first time I was taking a bus alone and I was the only female on the bus. For some reason, my mind turned all bitchy and I was shit scared of all the men in the bus. They probably were looking at me because they were letching or because they found it odd that I was traveling alone. I don’t know. Suddenly I began to have thoughts I was ashamed of .I didn’t even know I had such prejudices in me . Once, a friend had told me Sikhs in turbans were very trustable and I found comfort finding one on the bus. I was very suspicious of the Muslims and didn’t feel like trusting anyone in general because they were Men. Is it because I felt that my identity as a woman was threatened? In the sense that I felt unsafe being the only woman in a bus in some unknown town. Do prejudices pop up when one’s identity is threatened?Anyway, I turned my head to the moving moon and distracted myself from vague thoughts.